


broken and shattered

by midnightkey



Series: we've got the keys (the kingdom's ours) [1]
Category: Alice in Wonderland (Movies - Burton), Descendants (2015), The Isle of the Lost - Melissa de la Cruz
Genre: Asexual Character, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Magical Realism, Metaphors, Muteness, Pansexual Character, Prosopagnosia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-12 08:06:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7093615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightkey/pseuds/midnightkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Manipulated and influenced I will follow. Broken and shattered I will <a href="http://lovequeenpunkrockrebel.tumblr.com/post/145661537880/i-am-quite-content-with-your-destruction-of-my">love</a>.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	broken and shattered

**Author's Note:**

> Prosopagnosia is "face blindness" - it impairs someone's ability to recognize familiar faces, including their own. There's acquired and congenital prosopagnosia, the former being caused by damage to the occipito-temporal lobe and the latter being developmental (where the person who has it never develops the ability to recogize faces). In this case, Tate has congenital prosopagnosia.

**i.**

the first time the ace of hearts meets tatiana hightopp - tate, as everyone else so called her - she wonders how she never noticed someone this...noticeable. 

there is a vibrance to her that never looks muted, even among the gray of the clouds, all bright and shiny and never, ever dull.

and the first thing the ace of hearts thinks about her is,  _oh **no**._

**ii.**

the one thing the ace of hearts notices about tate is that she never talked, whether it be she was shy or she was mute or she just didn't like people, or auradon, or the people from auradon. 

but the girl never talks, and she never seemed to be able to recognize anyone by face, even herself.

 _prosopagnosia,_ tate's cousin called the latter.  _face blindness._

**iii.**

the second time ace meets tate - _really_ meets her, and doesn't just realize how far she's fallen for this girl - she asks about her voice.

tate blinks then smiles, and tells her it was stolen. in sign language and pictures and this expression on her face like she wasn't at all sad about her voice, she tells ace that it was _stolen_. 

ace knows the stories about the creatures in underland that are the fears of the people brought to life. that live in mirrors, that thrive in the dark, that have driven people mad. there are small patches in underland where some of them live and there are others still that lurk unseen on people's shoulders, planting doubts and fears and mental illness in their minds.

the people that leave for those patches never return - they are empty, hollow shells of who they used to be. they come back with lost limbs, lost eyes, lost minds. 

there is this small niggling feeling that tells her something about a familiar story about a girl who'd had her voice stolen and soon, her soul.

**iv.**

a creature from underland shows up on the school grounds weeks later, though it's gotten rid of before it can wreak any havoc, or before anyone else knows about it. lucky for the rest of school that ben and mal had happened to be passing by it. (by them, too, though ben and mal didn't know that. but they didn't know the creature had escaped virtually unscathed, though hindered by a small injury. all ace was thinking was that tate was safe, this relief that there hadn't been a chance to take tate's soul--)

**v.**

it isn't until christmas that ace realizes she has no home to go to. not in auradon, not on the isle of the lost, and most definitely not in underland. 

it's ally kingsleigh who brings up the idea of bringing ace home to underland. (ace wonders if ally knows that her birth mother died at sea and that her father had run off with some other woman, that alice was her aunt and namesake.) "i'm sure you would be welcome!" ally reassures her, though ace doesn't doubt it. 

alice herself only gives her this kind smile, motherly almost, with this knowing look in her eye. and ace says yes.

***

underland's winter was a soft one - soft morning cold, soft snow, soft muted colors that looked almost surreal. its winter holidays, too, were "wonderland unique" as ally so often said (despite it not being called wonderland). 

ace doesn't realize she'd been staring (at tate, of all people, but who else, really) until alice - about as natural in underland as she was in auradon - says at her elbow, "you really should say something." ace groans because she really should but she possibly couldn't. 

and yet, at alice's prompting, she followed tate to who knows where in the nearby woods. tate hardly startles at ace's presence - what she startles at is ace's sudden flustered talking before she huffs, "of all the people i could have fallen for!" and dragging tate down by the collar of her peacoat to kiss her.

(later, she must have this stupid grin on her face because the hatter leans over with, "finally got around to it, did you?" and she thinks that he seems awfully calm about the fact that she - the child of one of underland's banished - just  _kissed his daughter_ in the woods.)

  **vi.**

the ace of hearts is fifteen when she begins hearing voices in her dreams. "puppet," they called her -  _still_ call her. 

they tell her about a girl prone to madness with a stolen voice whose soul they plan to take. they tell their ace of hearts, their newfound puppet, to find her and get close to her and lead her to them. 

they tell her that betrayal would mean a multitude of things: certain death, or perhaps worse. torture. being driven to madness, the brink of insanity. dying over and over and over, every time different.

the ace of hearts is sixteen when she can carry out their plan and seventeen when she falls for the person she's supposed to betray. 

**vii.**

in the days that pass, ace can't help but fall down the rabbit hole that is tate hightopp. in the days that have passed since she arrived, tate has become hers - her reality bender, her hatter (every bit as mad as her father). 

(in the days that pass, ace wonders if she'll ever be able to betray _~~auradon~~_ tate.) 

**viii.**

they take to using underland's monsters, the other side - killing two birds with one stone, taking two worlds at once by siege.

***

where auradon is attacked by magic, underland is attacked by itself - its own monsters that are the fears of the people. where ben and mal and the auradonians stay behind, tate and ace and ally go to underland. their world, their bright, colorful, curious home, has been overrun by the manifestations of its people's fears. 

and ace thinks of her betrayal - leading the other side to underland, to auradon, to tate. but when the fight is over, all the blood spilt, the first person she goes to is tate.

(she finds tate with a sword at her creature's throat, all but ready to have her voice returned. there is this dark shadow that ace can recognize even from this far away, yellow eyes and a dark, dark expression that reads murder, vengeance, bloodthirst. and yet--

and yet. tate, when she sees ace, drops the sword, drops the chance to have her voice back, and chooses.

her ace of hearts over being able to speak again.)

**ix.**

underland, in the aftermath of the other side, is still left as bright and whimsical and magical as it had always been, if not for a bit more blood spilt on its land  ~~ _because of her_~~.

ben has tate's voice in a vial - caught from her creature, the last one to be killed and sent back to whatever hell it had emerged from. "just in case," he says, "you know, if you ever--" he clears his throat before continuing, "well, if you want to, that is, i mean, you never seemed to need it before." 

it floats as a colorful little puff, tate's voice, bright and shiny and never, ever dull. there was never a dull moment in underland, was there?

**x.**

the first conversation the ace of hearts has with tate hightopp that involves spoken aloud words from both of them is about birthdays. tate, in this case, was appalled by the fact that ace didn't know her birthday. 

"we need to pick you a birthday!" 

"or, you know, we could--" ( _ask time_ )

"--pick you one!" 

"...what about the day i chose you?" (also called: the day ace chose tate over the other side and tate chose ace over her voice. it was a day for choosing, that particular day.)

**xi.**

ally and tate are willed _the wander_ by alice when she passes away -  _to ally kingsleigh and tatiana hightopp, i leave my ship **the wander**. ownership of **the wander** shall pass to either both of them or to whichever one of them is still alive at the time of my passing. _

ally decides to sail the world. tate, again, chooses ace. 

 _fairfarren,_ they tell each other, some odd farewell of underland that's made its way into their vastly less interesting world of auradon. 

**xii.**

she meets time before they set anchor in wit's end. he is every bit as intimidating as she thought he'd look - he falls over within the first ten seconds of his entrance, of course, for all the grace of his outfit and his home. but, well-- he did try, she had to give him that. 

ace thinks that for all his immeasurability, time would always have some of himself to give for tate. 

("be good to her, hm?  _vasha zvezda_ ," he says of tate, "she chose you. keep being worthy of her choice."

"how do you know that i am?" (that she would continue being of worth? that she ever had any?) 

"you always were. it only took her for you to see that you were.")

**xiii.**

they go to wit's end, she and tate. they rebuild themselves there, from a villain's child and a mad hatter to two almost-children who were almost-adults - and yet still a girl and her hatter. 

(they are contradictory to each other, ace and tate. where ace had her muted colors, tate remained vibrant and bright and colorful and whimsical among everything, standing out even among underland's own brightness.)

they start knowing her as tate's ace, the people of wit's end. they give her a new name, in the end:  _the ace of hatters._

 

 

**Author's Note:**

>  _vasha zvezda,_ ваша звезда - your star ("my star" is moya zvezda)  
>  _fairfarren_ \- farewell. may you travel far under fair skies.  
>  _wit's end_ \- the little town where we are first introduced to tarrant's family, though witzend is the western land where the town is. (i named the town wit's end because i assumed when i saw the movie that witzend was the town bc i heard it as wit's end but then it turns out witzend is the area the town is in so)


End file.
